


Sanitarium Containment Procedures Foundation

by lrhaboggle



Category: American Murder Song, Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), SCP - Containment Breach, SCP Foundation, The Devil's Carnival (Movies)
Genre: AMS, American Murder Song - Freeform, Crossover, Devil's Carnival, F/F, F/M, Island - Freeform, Largo, M/M, Mass Crossover, Random - Freeform, Repo - Freeform, SCP, SCP Foundation - Freeform, Santiarium, Shilo - Freeform, Weird, repo man - Freeform, rotti, wallace - Freeform, zydrate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 17:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14241924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lrhaboggle/pseuds/lrhaboggle
Summary: The characters of Repo, Devil's Carnival and American Murder Song all coexist in a trio of buildings just a few miles away from Sanitarium. Along with this multitude of characters lives a slew of bizarre creatures that must be Secured, Contained, Protected. Follow Shilo and friends as she tries to uphold this oath and protect life from the monsters within the Foundation.





	1. Midnight Madness

Shilo Wallace shivered in terror. She could hear footsteps. Lots of footsteps. They echoed down the long hallway in which she stood and they were getting louder and louder with each passing moment. As the footsteps continued to get louder, Shilo felt herself getting dizzier and dizzier. That stupid blood disease of hers was kicking in again. It was the anxiety. It was making her lose focus, and her sense of stability was slipping away just as fast. Now was probably the absolute worst time for something like this to happen.

Unsure of what else to do in a situation like this, the sound of the footsteps about 20 feet away now, Shilo began to hyperventilate. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The girl reached out to touch one of the hallway's walls and the moment the cold metal touched her fingertips, she was able to gain some semblance of balance again. She began to back up as quickly as she could without her own boots making any noise. Already, her mind was formulating a plan. She had just left her father's office a few moments ago so she wasn't that far away from him and she knew he would still be there. It was her intention to just slow back up down the hallway until she reached his office again. He would know what to do! He was in charge of the Keter Floor here at the SCP Foundation after all. If there was anyone who could help her right now, it was him!

But Shilo never reached her father's office again. She didn't need to. Instead, when she had been about 20 paces away from it, she finally heard a human's voice echo down the hallway, and the sound scared the living daylights out of her.

"Absolutely not!" the voice snapped. Part of Shilo's shock came from the fact that she had not expected to hear a voice that spoke perfect English. Seldom few of the SCPs of the Foundation had that capability. But part of Shilo's shock also came from relief. If this truly was a human voice that she was hearing, then there was no danger at all and there was nothing for her to fear. Shilo found this thought immensely relieving. Besides, it wasn't every day you heard someone talking so freely here on the Keter Floor this late at night.

What's more, though it took her a moment, Shilo realized that she recognized the voice. It belonged to one of her fellow "classmates" here at the Foundation. They were all training to become full employees one day so, up until the day they received that full distinction and title, they all affectionately referred to themselves as students of the Foundation. It was more refined that "trainee" or "recruit" or "cadet" or "apprentice". And this voice that Shilo was hearing belonged to one of her fellow students. Maybe she'd only been at the Foundation for about the month and maybe she didn't know exactly who the voice belonged to, but she could still recognize the voice as being a friendly one and that was all that mattered. She was not dealing with a rogue SCP after all.

"Thank goodness," Shilo breathed to herself, exhaling slowly as she fought to recover her breath. But as the footsteps continued to draw near, a small surge of anger entered Shilo's heart. Seriously, who on earth was out here on the Keter Floor so late at night? It was way past curfew! Shilo was only here because she was speaking with her father, and he was only here this late because he was finishing up some paperwork. Shilo had a right to be here, but she was doubting that these people did! And Shilo was guessing there had to be at least two given the 'absolutely not' line, which implied a conversation. Slowly, Shilo's fear turned into annoyance and incredulity. She finally moved forward, taking a bold step towards the sound of the conversation. She made sure to stomp her boots against the cold metal floor as she walked along.

"What was that?!" the same voice as before jumped when it heard the sound of Shilo's boots, thumping against the floor. Shilo felt a dark pleasure rise up in her chest in response to the sound of genuine fear coming from the voice. Then at last, Shilo finally got a chance to actually see who it was that was out here so late. Faces were finally put with voices as Shilo rounded that last corner. They belonged to two young women about her age, maybe a few years older at max. One of them was a blond and the other was a brunette. Shilo answered the question with a sharp tone.

"It's an angry classmate who's wondering why you aren't in bed yet," she said, crossing her arms as she spoke. But the blond and brunette, instead of being alarmed, only perked up. It was clear that they recognized her voice as well. They picked up their pace to approach her quickly and, in the back of Shilo's mind, Shilo finally realized that the reason she thought she'd heard a score of little footsteps echoing down the hallway was because these two women had been walking in an unsynchronized step and the noise had echoed down the hallway and multiplied creating that illusion of being a creature with many feet, instead of just two women out on a late-night adventure.

"Shilo Wallace! It's you!" the blond was the first to speak once all three of them were face to face.

"Yes, it is," Shilo replied, still trying to keep up her tough persona, but she did feel a bit embarrassed that this girl seemed to recognize her even though Shilo had no idea who she was.

"Now answer my question. What are you two doing out so late?" she repeated.

"We could ask you the same thing," the blond replied cheekily.

"I was talking to my father," Shilo insisted. Even though it was dark, Shilo thought she saw the smug on the blond's face fade away. Ah-ha! Shilo got her there! Clearly, whoever these two were, they did not have the same permission that Shilo did to be running around the Foundation so late.

"Well, Cora and I were just exploring," the blond finally said. Ok, so the brunette was Cora. Shilo made mental note of it.

"Did you want to join us?" she asked.

"What? No!" Shilo was caught off guard by the remark and shook her head. "Not at all! I want us all to go back to bed! It's past midnight and we still have training tomorrow!" she insisted. "Now come on, let's get back to our part of the of Foundation. Where's the lift?"

"Oh, what? Come on, Shilo!" the blond pleaded. "Join Cora and I. It'll be fun, and I promise we won't be too terribly long!"

"June!" the brunette interrupted at last. Ok, so the blond was June. Shilo made mental note of it. "You heard Shilo! It's time for us to go! She has a point, after all, we should be in bed by now, not running around the Keter Floor!" she reprimanded.

"Bed, shmed!" June replied haughtily. "We're new recruits here, we deserve a chance to look around a little bit!"

"But why so late at night? And why alone?" Cora demanded, voicing Shilo's thoughts.

"Oh, but we're not alone!" June smiled. "We have Shilo here with us to protect us!" she cocked a bragging head in Shilo's direction.

"You what?!" she croaked.

"And she's the daughter of the fiercest worker that this Foundation has ever seen!" June continued proudly. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Cora scoffed, her dry laugh acting as a silent, incredulous question in response to June's. What could possibly go wrong? In Cora's mind, what could NOT possibly go wrong? But while Cora gave June a disbelieving look, Shilo had since wilted a little. Now she finally understood how June had managed to recognize her while she was unable to recognize June. It was because, as she had said, Shilo's father was something of a legend at the Foundation. He did indeed have the reputation for being the strongest, bravest, fiercest man to ever walk the long and winding halls. He was a hero to the students of the Foundation, and a celebrity back on the mainland. There wasn't a soul around who didn't know and revere the mighty name of Nathan Wallace. Because of that, when Shilo made her entrance into the Foundation, when everyone realized who she was in relation to Nathan, she became something of a celebrity in her own right. It was only her own outward pathetic nature that kept her from being swamped by eager, excited fans at all hours of the day, because even though she was definitely his daughter, she was anything but terrifying and powerful. She was too meek and mild to be an SCP worker.

When people finally caught onto this, they started to leave her alone. But even though her peers no longer bothered her at all hours of the day about her father, her name was still know across the facility, hence why June had recognized her so quickly. Shilo found it a little unsettling, but it was mostly because she really didn't feel cut out for this type of job. She hadn't even wanted to come here at all! It was all Nathan's idea! He was insistent that she would have to come here and take up his legacy one day. And it didn't matter how many times she protested, he refused to listen. It wasn't about what she wanted to do with her life, it was about the fact that they were father and daughter and, thusly, Shilo was expected to take up Nathan's mantle when he retired. There was no arguing her way out of it, so here she stood, an unwilling new student at the Foundation.

"Just because you have me doesn't mean you have anybody of real value," Shilo muttered at June in response to June's remark about Shilo being a huge asset to them, and their little midnight mission to explore.

"Oh come on, please!" June begged again. It was clear she wouldn't let Shilo just walk out of this, but it was mostly because she was worried that Shilo would tattle on them unless June could win her over.

"June!" Cora snapped again. "It's obvious she doesn't want to go and we might get in trouble-"

"Trouble? What's that?" June interrupted with a cocky laugh. "I know of no such thing!"

"Yes you do," Cora grumbled back. "You're just too stubborn and stupid to see it!"

"Oh, don't be such a wet blanket!" June cried again. "It's time you loosened up and had a little fun!" then she turned to address Shilo.

"If you don't feel ready to manage the Foundation, then you may as well start practicing today!" she insisted. "We all know you're going to take over your father's position one day, and that's a job that's going to need lots, and lots, and lots, and LOTS of training, so why not get started now?" As June trailed off, she glanced over Shilo's shoulder, down the hallway and past Nathan's office, right into the heart of the Keter Floor. That was where all the creatures were being contained. That was where June wanted to explore...

"I really don't think-" Shilo began, but then June looked her right in the eyes, pleading. Her hazel orbs seemed to widen and she even pushed out her lower lip, pouting adorably at Shilo. She made the softest of whining noises in the back of her throat, her eyes bored into Shilo's. They were so sweet and sad. Shilo began to feel herself physically weakening the longer she tried to say no to June.

"Please?" June asked at last, voice soft and almost melodic. Her eyes were hypnotizing as she continued to look earnestly at Shilo, waiting for the girl's approval. Shilo didn't last much longer before she finally caved.

"Well, how about we just take a look around for five minutes? Then we can go back to bed," she suggested, unable to resist June any longer.

"YES!" June fist-pumped in excitement before turning to Cora. "Are you in, Stein?" she demanded.

"I still don't know," Cora confessed, stepping away from June.

"Fine," June pretended to be offended. "I guess I'll just take Shilo instead. She knows what's up!" the blond threw a chummy arm around Shilo's shoulders and sounded proud as she said this. Shilo blushed a little, unused to being received with such warmth. She turned a shy, hopeful glance at Cora, wondering if Cora would cave or if she would somehow manage to resist June's inexplicable charms. Heaven knew Shilo hadn't. Just feeling that friendly weight of June's arm around her shoulder made her feel weak, but it was in a way she couldn't exactly describe or understand...

But any thoughts about June quickly fled from Shilo's mind when she met Cora's eyes. Just for a split second, Cora looked murderous. Truly, there was no other word to describe the fury and envy that seemed to make her eyes flash even in the dark hallway. Shilo shuddered. It was scary, seeing such a gentle, level-headed, young girl look so aggressive and possessive all of a sudden. The anger, hatred and unspoken challenge burned in Cora's eyes and Shilo almost found herself afraid of the meek young brunette, crazy as that sounded. But perhaps that flash of Cora's eyes had only been an illusion created in Shilo's head because it was gone as soon as it had come, and Cora's eyes were back to their normal blue almost at once. That murderous expression had morphed as well, going back to the gentle look Shilo had grown used to in these past few minutes.

"Fine. But only five minutes," Cora acquiesced, taking June's other arm.

"Wonderful!" June exclaimed in reply, happy with that deal. Then she led both Cora and Shilo on along into the heart of the Keter Floor.

Several minutes later, the trio found themselves facing one particular containment chamber with expressions of surprise. All of the other chambers that they had passed had each held some strange and sometimes horrific creature that was clearly inhuman. This chamber, however, contained a young man who looked like just another student of the Foundation. He looked so normal and innocent. Why was he here?

"Who even is he?" June asked, voicing the question both Shilo and Cora were wondering themselves. The blond stepped closer to the containment chamber in attempt to get a better look at this man. He was quite handsome. But then, as the trio was studying him, he sat up suddenly. Shilo and Cora jumped back immediately but June continued to peer in. Then, the SCP began to speak.

"Hey!" he waved. His voice was somewhat muffled by the glass, but the three could still understand him. "You wanna help me out of here? I got locked in this stupid cage because I looked like a monster to them. But deep down, I just wanna be loved," he gave them a honeyed expression as he peered out at them through the window on the door of his cell. Cora and Shilo were on guard at once, hardly able to believe that he thought that mere words alone would convince them to let him out of his chamber. June, however, seemed entranced by him, not wary at all.

"Come on, I'm not gonna bite" he continued to plead tenderly, seeing that he was winning June over. "They locked me up here because of a single, stupid misunderstanding. I'm not really a bad guy! I shouldn't be locked away in here! So, please, let me out. If you do, I can protect you," he said.

"He's insane," Cora whispered to Shilo, disgust clear on her face. Shilo had to agree. But June was still listening. Then at last, she opened the door.

"June!" Shilo and Cora both jumped at the blond, but it was too late. The door was open and the SCP was out.

For about five seconds, no one said or did a thing, and even June looked like she regretted what she had done. But the SCP, as he slowly started to walk again, strutting out of his cell to approach the three girls on the other side of the door, was totally relaxed.

"Oh, man it feels good to be out of that room!" he said, stretching dramatically. When he saw the wary faces of his three female friends, he laughed.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to bite," he repeated. "Now, what were you three even doing up here so late at night?" he asked.

"We were exploring," Shilo answered suddenly, taking a firm step forward. The SCP seemed somewhat surprised at this sudden boldness but he continued to wear a laidback grin.

"Exploring, huh?" he grinned at her, but she stood her ground, that strange rush of strength refusing to allow her to be cowed by him. Maybe she was going to be better for her father's job than she thought!

"We were exploring," she corrected him. "But now I think it's time we got back."

"Hey, hey, come on now. You're not going to need to do that," the SCP's smirk turned into a wolfish grin.

"What do you mean by that?" Shilo's eyes narrowed.

"I mean, we can keep exploring. There's no need to fear!" the wolfish grin turned at once back into that suave, charming smile that had won June over just seconds ago. "I can even show you around," he offered. "Come on! Trust me…"

"I can't believe we're doing this! I can't believe we're doing this! I can't believe we're doing this! I really can't believe we're doing this!" Shilo hissed under her breath. Despite her pleading, she and Cora and June were now following this SCP deeper into the Keter Floor, and farther away from the lift that would've taken them back to the safer, lower level of the joint. This midnight mission was turning into a midnight madness.

"I can't believe it either," Cora reassured her, that look of disgust and disdain still etched upon her face.

For a second, Shilo felt a little bit better. It made her glad to know she wasn't the only one having a problem with trusting such a shady SCP so quickly, but when she turned to look at Cora, that relief quickly turned sour again. That strange green haze had returned to Cora's eyes and, with it, had come that haunting look of hatred, of pure murder. It was indescribable, but painfully unsettling. Shilo looked away from Cora again after that, wondering if the brunette was even aware of what happened to her when she got angry. But since Shilo didn't have the guts to ask, she turned her mind back on their more present, pressing problem: the fact that they were trusting a random SCP that was leading them deeper into the Keter Floor and further away from the safety of the escape lift.

After passing several more chambers, each full of weird and sometimes terrifying creatures, the SCP guide stopped.

"Shhh," he said. "There's a really good one up ahead, but you need to be very quiet. If he wakes up, we'll be caught."

"Wonderful," Cora muttered.

"Come on," the SCP replied. "I've seen him already. You guys can go ahead and look, one by one," he stepped to the back of the trio and gestured for them to keep moving ahead. June recklessly moved forward towards that door. She peered in and delight lit up her face.

"He's so wicked!" she mouthed to her friends. Then she skipped away from the door, pushing Shilo and Cora closer to it as she passed them by. Cora and Shilo exchanged another disbelieving look before Cora took a peek inside the chamber...

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Cora and Shilo whipped around just in time to see June being pinned to a nearby wall by the SCP, but he wasn't using his hands. Instead, he was using the giant scorpion tail that had suddenly grown right out of his back.

"JUNE!" Cora and Shilo screamed in unison while June struggled vainly to escape the SCP's iron grip as his big black tail loomed over her head, its razor tip waggling dangerously over her. It was dripping with venom, June's eyes were wide with terror. As were Cora's and Shilo's.

The reactions of Shilo and Cora from that point on were totally different. Without even meaning to, Shilo froze up entirely and could only stare as the SCP-scorpion readied to strike June down once and for all. Cora, however, lunged forward. Unlike Shilo, did not freeze up at all. And instead of running away like a normal person, she did the exact opposite and jumped at the SCP. It was so contrary to her shy, quiet demeanor, but she lunged. She lunged right at this giant scorpion of an SCP and sucker-punched him as hard as she could. Turns out, her punches were far stronger than anyone could've ever imagined. She struck one right across his jaw that was powerful enough to send him reeling, and he released June in the same motion. Cora lunged again immediately, but this time, it was to grab June.

"Come on!" she commanded, then she yanked June up before turning to Shilo and repeating the same command and gesture, then, with strength and speed unmatched, she dragged both of her companions back down the hallway and right past the scorpion SCP, who was still clutching his jaw in pain. She really had done a number on him!

The scorpion was not so easily defeated, though. Instead, after just a few seconds, he recovered from Cora's painful punch and he roared out in fury. Though the punch had been painful, and literally scarring, he wasn't going to give up after one attack. Instead, he only upped the ante as his prey tried to escape. A strange clicking noise replaced the sound of human footsteps and the girls knew at once that the SCP had just replaced his human legs with scorpion legs in the same way the end of his spine had grown out into a tail. None of the three dared look back as they ran on.

As the trio ran on, Shilo felt increasingly dizzy as her oxygen levels decreased. Being scared out of her mind and then being forced to sprint down long hallways wasn't exactly the best thing for someone like her. She stumbled a couple times, scaring June and Cora. They may have known Shilo to be the daughter of the strongest man in this Foundation, but they had no idea she had a blood disease.

"Shilo!" June's grip tightened on Shilo as she stumbled for a third time. She looked over at Cora, but was only met with the same panic she was feeling. For a moment, true hopelessness filled her entire being but when she did dare to look back, despite being met with the horrific sight of a giant scorpion just a few feet away, an insane idea occurred to her. It was time to make this midnight madness downright psychotic!

"JUNE!" Cora screamed out for the girl as she began to slow down.

"I have an idea!" June answered the unasked question. "We need to get another SCP out here to fight him!"

"Are you mad?!" Shilo and Cora both screamed now. They took another turn down another hallway. June shook her head. The scorpion screeched angrily as he sensed that the girls had, yet again, taken a surprise turn away from him.

"And which monster did you have in mind, pray tell?" Cora tried to sound mad, but she was too scared to. Her angry question came out as a terrified yelp. June didn't even bother answering verbally. Instead, without another word, June rounded another corner. Without even realizing it, the trio had gotten entirely turned around and they were now back where they had started, facing that one door with the especially scary SCP that the scorpion had lured them too earlier. June pointed at the door, her answer to Cora's question all too clear.

"Are you mad?!" Cora repeated angrily as June made her suggestion.

"We already have a slim chance of survival," June replied. As if to accent that point, the scorpion uttered another hissing scream in the distance. "What could possibly go wrong?" June pleaded. Shilo saw Cora's expression contort to fury and it looked like she was about to tell June exactly what could go wrong, but before she could, they heard the scorpion scream again. This time, the noise was far closer.

It was time to do or die so Shilo, ignoring her quarreling companions, opened the containment chamber herself. She yanked herself out of their arms and pushed the button to open the door. The moment it was unlocked, she yanked off one of her boots and threw it right at the sleeping SCP. Just as she hoped, the thing jumped up at once and roared in anger.

"Holy crap!" all three girls couldn't suppress a shriek. June and Cora had already seen this SCP, but to see it standing up and angry was another matter entirely. He looked like a bear, massive and hairy. What made him such a danger, though, was the fact that he could morph various parts of his body into various types of weapons like swords, clubs or morningstars. Now, all of that anger and weaponry was awake, and the first thing it was seeing were the three girls that had interrupted its sleep. His left arm was a sword, his right arm was a mace, and his face was full of rage.

"RUN!" Shilo commanded, and neither June nor Cora could even think to disobey.

The three girls continued to run the winding halls and, behind them, they could hear roaring and screeching. The two SCPs had found each other and, just as planned, they were fighting. One was angry at being disturbed while the other was still hunting for his escaped meal. Of course their little union would not end in warmth and friendliness. But the girls didn't have time to celebrate. Instead, they needed to take this opportunity to get their bearings and find a way out. The sound of metal on metal followed them through the halls.

"This way!" June instructed, pointing ahead and then to the left.

"Are you sure?" asked Cora. June nodded and Cora didn't question her again. Instead, she put her faith in June and, helping her with Shilo, continued to run. Shilo was still close to passing out but she put on a brave face and let her friends guide her along.

But of course, the midnight madness was far from over. The girls were close to the lift when something landed in front of them at the end of the hall, cutting them off of their path. This thing looked like a giant man, except his skin was made entirely up of black leather and he had one oval eye right in the middle of his shiny black face. That oval eye glowed an ominous blue.

"SCP-000!" Shilo gasped as she got a look at him.

"What? No. Impossible! That SCP is just a myth!" June and Cora both protested. But Shilo only shook her head. She may not have known all the ins and outs about the Foundation, but even she had heard of the legendary and dreaded SCP-000, and she knew what he looked like, and this was it.

The SCP caught sight of them cowering in the dark and it began to advance upon them. Ok, now the trio was totally trapped. With the two Keters behind them and this legendary monstrosity in front, they were totally trapped. Once the mysterious SCP was a few feet away, though, he broke into a sprint. An impossibly fast sprint. It was over for them. This was their aching hour...

"Brace yourselves!" Shilo sobbed, feeling June and Cora dig their nails into her arms out of terror, but before the SCP would've hit them, he jumped right over their hands and landed a few inches behind them, then he kept on running.

"What?!" Cora panicked, whipping around to see the mysterious SCP still running away from them. The girls watched the SCP until the darkness swallowed him whole, then the sound of the other two SCPs reached their ears again. This time, though, the noises they made were noises of fear and pain instead of anger.

"He's fighting them off!" June was the first to realize this. Her green eyes met Cora's blue ones and Shilo's brown ones and not a single word was needed before the three continued their race to the lift. They jumped onto it, slamming the button to take them to the ground floor. Once at the ground floor, they ran across it and to the center. It was their intent to raise the alarm that there were, currently, three SCPs on the loose and even though they were all the way up on the third floor, they could very easily escape, especially if nobody cut the power to the lift.

Before any of them could reach the master alarm, however, something knocked them all off of their feet. When they looked up, a hoard of faceless guards was bearing down on them with guns, locked and loaded.

"Looks like we got some escapees, ya heard it?!" one of the head guards cackled maliciously.

"I heard it, and you know what we do with escapees, don't'cha?!" the second leader of the guards echoed in a similar, accented tone.

"Wait! Wait! Don't shoot!" June pleaded, throwing out both of her arms, one over Cora and one over Shilo. Shilo, at this point, was suffering a seizure. The way she had fallen when she and her companions were tripped knocked the breath straight out of her and she hadn't had much air in her lungs to begin with. Cora, meanwhile, was busy trying to protect June just as June was trying to protect her.

In short, it was a gaggle of flying limbs and pleading words in a darkened room with several well-armed guards ready to kill. Shilo passed out just as June pleaded, one last time, for the guards to hold their fire. She fainted before she got to hear the bullets being fired in protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This is a Repo/Devil's Carnival/American Murder song crossover with the SCP Foundation. As such, it is a bit inaccurate and odd, but I hope it's at least still somewhat fun and enjoyable. 
> 
> To quickly explain the geography of the place: I imagine it looking like Azkaban, being a giant stone prison out in the sea a few miles away from the mainland of Sanitarium. It's a tall prison and the higher up you go, the more danger you're getting. I also imagine it as being a series of three buildings and not just one. 
> 
> The first building actually houses the SCPs.
> 
> The next acts as a place for the employees to live (in this canon, all workers live on-site. They never leave). 
> 
> And the third building acts as a "bridge" between the other two. It also houses all the things that humans need to deal with SCPs (arms, armor, medicine, etc. It holds other things the human workers need to survive, but it's not a space for people to actually live in). 
> 
> But that's just my mental map of the place, and these three buildings create that triangle shape.
> 
> Edit as of 3/13/19: I realized how poorly-executed this story was originally, so I'm cleaning it up.


	2. Recovery

Tubes. Those were the first things Shilo was aware of. And they were all over her body, everywhere. Long, twisting cylinders. They ran in, out and around her exhausted figure. She sighed heavily. No doubt, she had forgotten to take her medicine and her disease had gotten the best of her. Now, her dad was probably trying to fix things up and help in her recovery. This wasn't a happy thought for her, though, because she knew she would receive an earful from him later.

"Wonderful," the girl sighed. Then, to amuse herself for the time being, she let her eyes roam the room.

"Wait a minute!" she muttered. "This is my room?" Such a question made no sense, grammatically or logically, but it encapsulated Shilo's thoughts fairly well. Wherever she was right now, it was not her bedroom. But that made no sense! She was always in her bedroom! Literally, she never left it. The only time she was allowed out was if her father was around, and even then, she still had to stay inside the house. She was never anywhere else except her house (more specifically, her room). But this place was most definitely not her room. Her room was small and dark. It was full of clutter, bits and pieces from the outside world she was forbidden from visiting. But this place? It was large, and spacious, and bright. It was sterile white and there was light streaming in from tall windows on every wall. What?

But then, the longer she stared in awe and confusion, the more and more it came back to her until, finally, it all clicked.

"The SCP Foundation!" she exclaimed softly as she finally remembered where she was and how and why. Then she remembered the specifics, the midnight madness, June, Cora, the SCPs, the armed guards that were threatening to shoot them... Wait. Where were June and Cora? Shilo struggled to sit up, hoping to catch a glimpse of them beside her in the foundation's hospital.

"Hey, that was a close one," a voice murmured. As Shilo reached a fully upright sitting position, she turned to see her father walking in.

"Dad?" she asked.

"Too close," he replied, a grim look in his tired eyes as he came even closer. He had his medical bag with him. And her medicines.

"Dad, what happened?" she pressed again as he sat down beside her on the hospital bed.

"Nothing Shilo," he murmured. "Nothing."

"No. Something happened," Shilo protested weakly. She hated how her father tried to sugarcoat things. She was sick, not stupid.

"It wasn't nothing. I remember everything about last night!" she continued, insistent.

"Shilo," Nathan tried to quiet her again, but she would not be silenced this time.

"Where are June and Cora? And the SCPs?" she demanded. Nathan looked away, but Shilo continued to glare at him, brown eyes boring into him.

As this silent stare-down continued, Nathan began to cough. Shilo sat back with an eye-roll. He did this all the time. Whenever she tried to push him for answers, he would suddenly find some reason to throw her off. Whether he started coughing, sneezing, or just excusing himself for some "personal medical emergency", Shilo knew it was all fake. He was just trying to get away from her to get away from the questions.

Honestly, if he was going to pretend to suddenly be overtaken by a coughing fit, he could at least try and make the coughs sound a bit more realistic! And Shilo knew for a fact that Nathan was faking because Nathan had an amazing immune system. If only Shilo had inherited his instead of her mother's! Her mother had been the one to give her this stupid blood disease in the first place!

Finally, though, the coughing subsided and Nathan's answer pulled Shilo out of her bitter thoughts.

"June and Cora weren't as injured as you were," he said. Shilo blinked in surprise. She hadn't expected Nathan to actually answer her question.

"Where are they?" she asked.

"Already back in training," Nathan replied. "We were able to get them out of the hospital this morning and they should be in class right now."

"What about the SCPs?" Shilo asked. "Did you kill them?"

"Precious, you know we can't do that," Nathan reminded the girl. Shilo's shoulders slumped. Admittedly, that had been a dumb question on her part. If SCPs were killable, the world wouldn't have needed this Alcatraz-like facility in order to house them. But still, Shilo had hoped...

"I guess you returned them to their containment chambers?" she tried again. Nathan nodded this time. "Which ones were they anyway? We didn't get a chance to get a good look at them," Shilo ducked her head embarrassedly as she asked this next question and Nathan heaved a sigh.

"They were the ones we called Scorpion and Tamer," he said.

"What about the third one?" Shilo asked.

"Third?" Nathan sounded genuinely confused.

"Yeah," Shilo said. "There were three. Right?" she paused when Nathan continued to look puzzled.

"There were only two," he said. "All signs and documents have only recorded two."

"But I was sure I saw another one!" Shilo protested. Then she described him. Big and black, a living shadow, with a big, glowing blue eye.

"Nonsense!" Nathan shook his head after Shilo finished explaining but just for a moment, the girl thought she saw worry in his eyes...

Awhile later, Shilo woke up without even remembering falling asleep. Checking a clock on the far wall, she realized that it was late afternoon. In the back of her mind, she realized that training would've just finished for the other new employees of the facility.

"Shilo? Shilo?!" ah, speak of the Devil! Shilo recognized the voices of June and Cora. She turned in time to see them running towards her from the hospital's large entrance. Relief was evident on their faces and Shilo couldn't help a smile as they raced over to her.

"Hey guys!" she hugged them both as soon as they were close enough.

"Oh, Shilo! Shilo! Thank goodness you're ok!" they exclaimed in unison, hugging and caressing her face.

What ensued was a frenzy of words from both of the girls as they tried to tell Shilo all that had happened to them since Shilo fainted last night. Shilo couldn't help but note how different they were from her father. Where he would never give her a straight answer no matter how hard she tried to get one, these girls did nothing but spew answers and information at her. In fact, it all came out so fast that Shilo eventually gave up trying to decipher it. Instead, she just let them speak until they had gotten all of their worries out of their systems.

Once the three of them were calm, though, Shilo was finally able to get something resembling a story out of them. Apparently, even though the girls were the only ones on the Keter Floor by that point in the day, they had generated enough noise to wake Nathan, who had actually been headed back because he had left something in his office. Upon hearing all the ruckus, even though he didn't fully understand how dire things were, he sounded an alarm and a rescue squad had just been about to come up there. That was the group of heavily-armed guards. Although SCPs, especially Keter ones, were too dangerous to kill, they could still be somewhat detained. The guards were just about to see what was going on when three frantic girls collapsed right at their feet.

"And they didn't shoot?" Shilo asked, sounding relieved.

"Thankfully," June agreed. "They came close, but they recognized us. They realized we weren't threats."

"If they had, none of us would be here right now," Cora agreed somberly. All at once, the triumphant and relieved atmosphere was laced with gloom. They had come so close to death so many times that night. The three of them were lucky they hadn't been severely injured, let alone killed.

"Anyway, how was training today? What did I miss out on?" Shilo asked abruptly, trying to bring some warmth back into the room. June and Cora both took Shilo's change of topic gratefully and launched into a slew of stories once more. At least these ones were a bit happier. It sounded like their teachers for the day had attempted to call them out on their folly by not-so-subtly referencing other times the Foundation had been put in danger from lose SCPs but the teacher, at least, had the manners to not mention any names directly.

"It was pretty clear what he was trying to do though," June muttered angrily. "He kept saying things like, 'outbreaks on the Keter floor' and 'threats to the Foundation' and 'foolish mistakes on behalf of incompetent workers'. It wasn't very subtle!"

"At least nobody from the mainland came down," Cora reminded June.

"Ah, the mainland!" Shilo's interest in the conversation increased when Cora mentioned Sanitarium, the place they had all come from. "What did they have to say about the almost-apocalypse?" she asked with a dry smirk.

"Well, obviously, Rotti was pretty mad, but of course he didn't try coming over," June's anger was palpable, but Shilo could understand it on some level. Rotti Largo had created the SCP Foundation, but he was too much of a coward to ever come and visit it himself. Instead, if any person from the mainland did ever come into contact with the Foundation, it was just some faceless mook.

"He sent one of his children this time," Cora replied gently, trying to justify Rotti's behavior and point out that he hadn't been all bad. Cora had never been good at opposing authority.

"That ain't saying much!" June snorted. "Besides, sending his kids instead of coming over himself is even more cowardly than if he would just send some low-level GenTern, or whatever!" she added.

"Which Largo child?" Shilo asked over June's cynical remarks regarding the leading family of the country.

"The oldest one," Cora said. "I can't remember his name. It was Luciano, or something."

"No, Luigi!" Shilo corrected grimly. "The really angry one."

"Yeah. Him. He was pretty pissed. He just spent 20-odd minutes cussing at us before storming out," June said.

"Sounds like him," Shilo answered. She may have never seen the outside world before, but even she knew about Luigi and his infamous temper.

"But after he left, things got back to normal well enough," June said. "Two of the older employees managed to actually trip Luigi and make him fall out of the little speed boat that brought him over here," she added. Then both she and Cora laughed a little at the memory. The two employees responsible were two adult men who had worked with the Foundation for quite awhile, yet they still had a very childish and immature sense of humor. Apparently, during Luigi's furious diatribe, they had covered the path out of the Foundation in some strange goop that they refused to explain. Of course, as Luigi was exiting the Foundation, he slipped on the goop and one of the two managed to shove him into the water.

But it was not an action done out of malice. They made sure that Luigi was able to get back out of the water and into his speedboat safely, but as soon as he had gone (cursing about the water ruining his shirt and hair all the while) the two men made a beeline to the security room and stole the footage of that particular moment. That video would live on in infamy forever.

"Which of the two did it?" asked Shilo, laughing as the girls described the video. They promised to show her later. She could only imagine how mad Luigi must've been on that ride home, covered in disgusting sea water and shrouded in a bitter chill. She only hoped that anyone else on that speedboat managed to survive the ride home and not fall prey to Luigi's wrath, which was surely taken out upon them.

"I don't remember their names," June answered. "But they're the weird couple with the necklaces of the key and the heart and the odd little red tattoos on their inner forearms."

"Oh, yeah! The convicted murderers," Shilo muttered grimly. She still wasn't exactly sure about their history, but apparently, they were, as she had said, convicted murderers, and their sentence was to serve the Foundation. Those "little red tattoos" were brandings, marking them as killers.

By some miracle, though, they managed to survive every encounter with an SCP that they had ever had. Usually when criminals were sentenced to work at the Foundation, it was the equivalent of getting the death penalty. No one was supposed to survive and, normally, they didn't. But these two men seemed to be the exception, for they had been here for years, and they were still alive and kicking. But because they managed to last so long, and they were such friendly fellows despite their heinous crimes, the Foundation had grown attached to them and they were welcomed into the ranks as full employees. Of course, they were still kept on very tight watch and everyone else in the facility was always warned about them, but all in all, they could make for some very humorous companions. This kind of prank was definitely something they would do.

"Ok, girls, that's enough!" Nathan's voice interrupted the three friends. "My daughter needs her recovery and it is dinner time. You two are expected to report to the dining area at once," the man crossed his arms as he scowled at June and Cora. It was clear that he still hadn't forgiven them for nearly killing his daughter.

"Yes, sir!" Cora answered at once, trembling under Nathan's stern gaze. Meanwhile, June opened her mouth to protest. She wanted to stay with Shilo for a bit longer. They weren't doing any harm! Besides, Shilo had been in bed all day and her wounds were healing up nicely. They weren't causing her further harm by just chatting! And her injuries hadn't been that grievous to begin with! Honestly! She'd received a few scrapes and bruises, but the worst of it was just her little fainting-spell, but even that hadn't been too bad. She still woke up the next morning, after all!

But Nathan was just as stubborn as June and he wasn't going to let, a troublesome student, boss him around. Instead, he only raised an eyebrow threateningly and June, feeling Cora squeeze her arm, bowed her head.

"Yes, sir," she mumbled. Then she and Cora both cast a farewell look at Shilo who returned it unhappily.

"Did you really have to send them away?" the girl asked her father once the other two had gone.

"You need your recovery," Nathan repeated.

"I've been in recovery all day!" Shilo finally voiced the argument June had wanted to use earlier.

"Your body is still recovering. Remember that your blood disease means it takes longer for you to heal from traumatic events," Nathan answered.

"Oh yeah, my blood disease. How could I have forgotten?" Shilo asked sarcastically. Nathan took a deep breath but said nothing. Instead, he only handed Shilo a few pills and the girl took them with a scowl. They were bitter and hard going down.

"I will see you later, Shilo," Nathan said, then he left his daughter alone in the hospital room.

"Bye," she replied bitterly. By the next morning, though, Shilo was deemed healthy enough to go back to training. She joined June, Cora and all the other Foundation employees and was pleasantly surprised at how little trouble the others were giving them. So, life continued on...

A couple years later, Shilo and her friends became full members of the SCP Foundation in their own right. After about a year of arduous training, they had received their official memberships and were made into fulltime employees. But their status at the Foundation wasn't the only thing that had changed. Instead, the girls had also matured quite a bit. Shilo, though still very naturally reserved and socially awkward, had learned how to talk to people and could be quite courageous and commanding when she needed to be. It was that side of her that resembled her father. Maybe she was fit to take over his position after all! She had grown up, and grown out of her shell, little by little. She was no longer the trembling little wallflower she used to be.

June and Cora had also changed. June was still as hotheaded, carefree and adventurous as always, the life and light of the Foundation, but a new side of her had emerged ever since taking one of the higher positions in the Foundation. She proved to be a very effective commander, the air of a natural leader and order-giver in every step she took. She apparently did know how to be serious and she was deadly cunning and intelligent. She was a natural leader and strategist and her talents did not go to waste.

Cora, meanwhile, had gained her own type of strength. Back as a student, self-esteem had been a huge issue for her. Insecurities and inferiority had plagued her and even though they did resurface even now, being invited into this family of the Foundation had given her a security blanket. It gave her a solid foundation upon which she built the rest of her character and there was a new sense of self-confidence within her that had not been there before. She smiled more, she spoke more, and she cowered less. All three of these young women had finally grown up.

Some things, however, did not change. June's pension for trouble was one of these things, and Cora's devotion to her was another. Over the years, June had received a good number of suitors. Not a single one lasted very long with the flirtatious blond, but it was not because June's mind had changed. Instead, it was because no suitor could withstand the wary eyes Cora gave them whenever they came too close to the blond. As far as Cora was concerned, June was hers and anybody else who would try to come between them was either really dumb or really desperate. So for all the lovers June courted, Cora was the only one who ever truly remained by her side.

But June and Cora weren't the only ones whose hands were steeped in romance. Shilo had, a few months ago, taken up with one of the more mysterious members of the Foundation as well. He referred to himself as Graverobber and it sounded like he used to be someone who actively went out into the world trying to find SCPs to bring back to the Foundation. He never revealed why he stopped.

But he was nice enough, all things considered, and from what Shilo learned about him, he was the brother of one of the two murderers. The two men, the couple who had pranked Luigi all those years ago, were still very active here. The taller one was Graverobber's brother. His name was Mr. Tender (his companion's name was Mr. Storm). The resemblance between Graverobber and Mr. Tender was uncanny. There were moments when Shilo wondered if they hadn't ever switched up on her and tricked her into thinking she was with Graverobber when, in actuality, she was with Mr. Tender. She knew if she asked she wouldn't get a straight answer, though. So she let it slide.

Nathan hadn't exactly been keen upon the idea of Shilo dating anyone, let alone someone like Graverobber, but because most of his days were spent trying to keep the Keter SCPs under control, he didn't have as much time to scare off Shilo's suitors in the way Cora scared off June's.

But Shilo didn't only make human friends over her years at the SCP Foundation, A few of the SCPs, the safe ones, that is, had actually proven to be very friendly indeed. The first was a weird human-frog-hybrid girl that the Foundation had so creatively named Tadpole. Tadpole was incredibly gentle and shy. It was clear she didn't like being trapped in the Foundation all the time, but at the same time, she never made a single move to escape. She never dared hurt any of her workers, but it wasn't because she was afraid of them. It was because she really was fond of all of them, especially Shilo. So despite being an ugly frog-hybrid girl who longed to swim freely in the sea once more, she was relatively passive and friendly. There was nothing scary about her, except maybe her odd appearance, but that was easy to get used to. (Though her diet of bugs was a little more disconcerting as she did have that long tongue frogs were famous for and that was a bit creepy to see).

A second SCP Shilo had taken up with was, strange as it sounded, a sentient horn. Shilo wasn't sure what kind of horn it was supposed to be, but that paled in comparison to the realization that this thing was legitimately a sentient horn. It could move around by itself and communicate by blasting varying pitches from itself. And since it did have intelligence to match a human's, it would often times play songs and music by request. It was a completely harmless creature, though it was incredibly strange. And what was its name? Well, some of the cruder members of the facility called it Mr. Horny or Trom-boner (though it certainly wasn't a trombone). But these names didn't seem to bother the SCP, though its more commonly-accepted name was Allergo. This was a name given to it in honor of its lively attitude. Yes. A horn, which was a sentient to a human level, managed to be lively. And actually, it had its own special sense of humor because, sometimes, instead of playing any particular song, it would just emit farting or burping sounds instead. This earned it yet another "creative" nickname: Toot. The Foundation really was a very weird place.

Then lastly was an SCP cruelly named Medusa. Unlike the character of myth, she did not have snakes for hair, nor was she aggressive. What earned her the name, though, was the fact that she did still have the power to paralyze people with her gaze. This Medusa was a very beautiful woman. She had long black hair and very pale skin. She was sweet, gentle, polite, kind, intelligent and thoughtful. She was practically human! The stinger came in the form of her eyes, or rather, the lack thereof.

Although nobody could ever look upon her face, lest they become paralyzed, Medusa had since drawn them a picture of what her face looked like. It wasn't pretty. Within her beautiful white face were two big black holes where eyes should have been. Blood constantly leaked from those holes, but she was never in danger of death. The only danger was to anyone who looked into her eye sockets. For some reason, doing so would cause them to turn into cast iron. But despite this Hellish condition, Medusa was considered a Safe SCP simply because she understood her condition and did her best to keep it from hurting anyone. She was intelligent and compassionate enough to actively quell her power and thusly did not need to be kept under such tight control as some of the other SCPs in the Foundation. She really was very kind and she was an excellent conversationalist. Next to nobody disliked her. It was why she, Allegro and Tadpole were some of Shilo's favorite SCPs.

Sadly, the rest of the SCPs were not nearly as friendly. They could range anywhere from mildly dangerous to outright psychotic, and a friendship with them was almost impossible to generate. For the more aggressive ones, doing daily maintenance often resulted in physical battles and, almost every time, Shilo wound up in the hospital. For all of her strength and development as a member of this facility, she was not cut out to be a fighter and her blood disease was an ever-present threat. She had yet to win a single battle against a Keter SCP on her own. She always needed a lot of help, but luckily, she always received it. All things considered, life at the Foundation really wasn't half bad! Shilo couldn't really complain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This is sort of a bridge chapter that links the first one up to what comes next. It's also an excuse to toss in a few more characters alongside the development of our main three gals. In this chapter are:
> 
> Storm and Tender from AMS
> 
> Tamara and the Publicist from Devil's Carnival
> 
> And Graverobber and Mag from Repo


	3. Genetic Perfection

Shilo Wallace shivered in terror. She could hear footsteps. Lots of footsteps. They echoed down the long hallway in which she stood and they were getting louder and louder with each passing moment. As the footsteps continued to get louder, Shilo felt herself getting dizzier and dizzier. That stupid blood disease of hers was kicking in again. It was the anxiety. It was making her lose focus, and her sense of stability was slipping away just as fast. Now was probably the absolute worst time for something like this to happen.

Unsure of what else to do in a situation like this, the sound of the footsteps about 20 feet away now, Shilo began to hyperventilate. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The girl reached out to touch one of the hallway's walls and the moment the cold metal touched her fingertips, she was able to gain some semblance of balance again. She began to back up as quickly as she could without her own boots making any noise. Already, her mind was formulating a plan. She had just left her father's office a few moments ago so she wasn't that far away from him and she knew he would still be there. It was her intention to just slow back up down the hallway until she reached his office again. He would know what to do! He was in charge of the Keter Floor here at the SCP Foundation after all. If there was anyone who could help her right now, it was him!

"Holy crap!" Shilo whispered as she finally caught sight of the SCP that was creeping down the hall. She knew this one to be called Changeling. It was a creature that could, as the name implied, shapeshift into anything it came in contact with. All he needed to do was touch someone, or something, then he could take on that thing's form for his own.

Currently, he was masquerading as a long, legged snake. He was something that wasn't exactly a lizard or a centipede or a snake, rather, he was some horrible mix of the three. Now, Shilo had no idea how Changeling could've possibly gotten in contact with any of the three creatures, but he must've or else he wouldn't look like this right now. Somehow, he must've escaped his cell, or had those three creatures accidentally wander in. But regardless of how Changeling had been able to access a lizard or a centipede or a snake, all Shilo needed to know was that he had. Somehow, he had found those three creatures, and this was the nightmarish result. But even scarier than his new physical appearance (his old one resembling an amorphous shadow) was the fact that he was currently roaming the Foundation, free.

Changeling was a very smart and cunning creature, so for him to be on the loose wasn't just terrifying because he was a deadly creature, but because he would be next to impossible to recapture again. And likely, he would try to free all of his other comrades as well, and then it would really be over for the Foundation. So not only did Shilo have to try and recapture Changeling, she had to make sure he didn't free any other SCP, or try and impersonate a human employee. That would make things really difficult...

At last, Shilo stopped backing up. She had reached her father's office and opened the door again.

"Shilo?" Nathan, looking aged with time, looked up at her in confusion. "What are you doing back here? What's wrong?"

"Changeling is out. I don't know how or why, but he's out and alone and currently creeping along these halls in the form of a legged snake," Shilo answered at once, cutting to the chance without a moment's hesitation. If her words seemed strange and sudden, though, Nathan didn't show it. Instead, the moment he heard Shilo saying that something was loose in the Foundation, he stood up and pressed a button behind his desk. It was an alarm system that would alert every area of the facility in a quiet manner. Plans would be made at once to evacuate everyone except for the rescue squad who would be dispatched to the Keter Floor in attempt to put this idiocy to bed before it got too intense. The last time such an alarm had to be raised was years ago when Shilo was still just an innocent student. Now she had matured and was a lot calmer this time around.

"You're going to lead an Evac team, I'm going to lead a Containment team," Nathan said as he and Shilo exited the office. Then, the fun began.

The evacuation began well enough but, at one point, Changeling managed to come in contact with a human, just as Shilo feared. For awhile, he bided his time in his human disguise and pretended only to be another member of the Evac Team. Once the doors to the Foundation were open, however, he reverted back into his original shape and started attacking. Chaos ensued as the evacuees were forced to improvise and run faster than what was originally planned. New routes had to be taken and the few employees that were running the operation had to be there to help all the other evacuees onto the lifeboats that would speed them off to the mainland. To have to do all of this, organizing a mass evacuation, with a dangerous SCP chasing after them, was far from easy. Already, calls were being made to Rotti Largo in the hopes that he would send some of his GeneCops to help and be ready when the evacuees came ashore.

Shilo was the leader of one of these teams. Once everyone in her jurisdiction was present, she began shouting orders.

"Fourth gate! Single file! Graverobber take point and Mr. Tender take rear!" she bellowed. Somehow, through the chaos, her people heard her command and they obeyed. While Graverobber weaved his way to the front, Mr. Tender joined Shilo towards the back of the group. Mr. Storm was leading one of the other evacuation teams with a woman named Lavinia Fisher.

She was another convicted murderer, but Storm and Tender had spared her the gruesome fate of being turned into an SCP's next meal and instead had her join them as another one in their merrily murderous membership. Lavinia was a spitfire and a hard drinker. It was part of what had attracted Storm and Tender to her in the first place instead of having them just let her die off like the other convicts who came their way. They deemed Lavinia special enough to save, so they did, and like them, she had proved to be an... interesting addition to the Foundation. Now she stood beside Storm, barking orders in a heavily-accented bellow.

"Ain't this fun?!" Mr. Tender asked, giving Shilo a discomfortingly sadistic smile.

"It's just the best," the girl responded with a forced smile. Then the pair pushed their group forward towards the Fourth gate. Storm and Lavinia were headed for the sixth. Behind them was an ocean of students and employees alike, fleeing for their lives.

"Shilo? Shilo?! SHILO!" Shilo was halted in her track by the sound of someone shouting her name from behind.

"I'll keep 'em straight," Mr. Tender promised the girl when she turned back to him.

"Thanks," she murmured, then she darted back to the sound of the voice calling her name.

"SHILO!?" it called one last time before Shilo was able to reach it.

"Cora?" Shilo came to a dead halt when, through the darkness and the swarm of bodies, Shilo realized she recognized who was calling for her.

"Shilo!" Cora turned back, undisguised relief in her eyes as she finally saw Shilo.

"Cora! What are you doing?! You're supposed to be evacuating!" Shilo's bossier side came forth then.

"I'm looking for June!" Cora replied. "Have you seen her anywhere?"

"June?" Shilo croaked, eye twitching. "Cora, June is part of the squad going up to stop those SCPs. She's not evacuating. You know this! It's her job! It's what she's trained to do!" Shilo tried to get Cora to see that June wasn't going to be leaving but Cora began to shake her head.

"No. No, no, no, no! June is coming with me. She has to! She belongs with me…" the brunette pleaded.

"Cora, now is not the time for romantic ideas and stupid plans!" Shilo warned her friend, but when Cora's eyes bored into her eyes, Shilo took a step back. That murderous green light had returned to her normally blue eyes.

"I'm not leaving without June," Cora repeated. Her voice was far softer than before but somehow, Shilo heard it louder than anything else she had said since the evacuation started. "Protocols be damned, I don't care if she's the leader of the squad. She is coming home…" Cora repeated, then she took off, running back into the Foundation. Shilo stared after her for a moment before calling out to her.

"Cora? Cora?! CORA!" then the young woman suddenly found herself running back after the insane brunette.

As Shilo ran after Cora and back into the Foundation, nothing short of pure chaos was reigning in on all sides. Shilo could hear screaming and roaring that mingled with the sounds of weaponry and bodies being torn open. She tried not to dwell on that last sound as another explosion rocked the ground beneath her. She wasn't sure if it had been a human's bomb or one of the larger SCPs that was currently out and attacking. It looked like something out of the old horror films Shilo used to watch. The only difference was that this one was real and she was in the heart of it. All around her, through the living and dead bodies that lined the halls, the building was being torn apart, and electronics of all kinds were sparking, and lights were blowing out. Wires were going crazy, walls were collapsing, floors were cracking in half. Madness didn't even begin to cover it.

Somehow, though, through all the madness and the war, Shilo managed to see a shock of blond hair that was so pale it was almost white. June. She was busy fighting off a little boy who seemed stronger than ten men. He had a little sword in his hand and he was very good with it. Something red was glowing upon his arm. Shilo had no idea what it was, but right now, she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at June.

"There!" Shilo pointed. Cora seemed to have heard her and she turned back. Once she saw where Shilo was pointing, she looked forward again and suddenly lunged when she saw June.

"Wait! Cora! Don't interrupt her! It could be dangerous! If you interrupt her, she may mistake you for another SCP! CORA!" Shilo tried to shout, but all she could do was scramble after Cora who seemed to have picked up an inhuman speed and agility, dodging every obstacle with ease as she continued running at June without a thought to anything or anyone else.

Several minutes later, Cora had somehow dragged June from battle and brought her back to Shilo.

"Are you mad!?" June snarled, trying to yank her armored arm out of Cora's grasp. "I was in the middle of helping them!"

"They'll be fine without you! You were only just one fighter. Besides, this may be a lost cause! Come with me before it's too late!" Cora argued. She kept her iron grip on June's arm, ignoring the other girl's attempts to return to battle. June's face was covered in blood, but none of it was hers.

"I have to keep helping them! It may mean the fate of the world!" June insisted, raising her sword-gun weapon thing.

Another explosion went off in the background of the battle.

"We're trying to keep the SCPs known as God and Lucifer under control because if they get out, they could end the world in a snap! They are the reality warpers and that's the last thing any of us need. Now let me go!" she tried to yank away from Cora again.

"Come with me!" Cora repeated, but her voice was much softer and deadlier again. She didn't even budge as June continued to tug away.

"No!" June ignored Cora's shift in tone and continued to try and yank her arm away from Cora. It wasn't working.

This mini fight carried on for some time more before Shilo finally snapped.

"ENOUGH!" she screamed. "We are in the middle of a freaking apocalypse! Can't you guys stop acting like an old married couple and GET YOUR PRIORITIES IN ORDER?!" Shilo's fury finally seemed to snap her companions out of their foolish quarrel but ultimately, it didn't matter either way because another SCP had just stepped onto the scene and this one was a known troublemaker, as well as being one of the more violent and terrifying Keters in the Foundation.

His only given name was Howler, and he received the name because of the awful noise he made when he was excited. And his excitement was never a good thing. He only ever got excited around food, and he ate humans. To the Foundation, his bone-chilling howl was synonymous with a death toll. But if that weren't terrifying enough, he was also a giant. He towered over everyone. It was hard to tell if he was supposed to be a wolf, a werewolf, or just a really hairy cannibal, but either way, he wasn't very easy on the eyes. He looked like something out of a cheesy old horror flick, but he was far worse simply because he was real. This battle was like a feast to him, and he ate any human that stumbled too close to his cavern of a mouth, lined with teeth that would make a shark swim away in terror. The more he ate, the bloodier and blood-lustier he became, which only drove him to eat even more. It was a very vicious cycle.

"AAWWWOOOOOOO!" he cried, the guttural sound bubbling up from his throat and passing his bloody teeth and lips. The sound was enough to distract Cora, which was enough for June to twist out of her iron grasp and run back into battle.

A girl that looked like she had been fused with a bulldog went charging past, but it was easy to see that she was running away out of fear. She wasn't an aggressive SCP, she was a frightened one, and she was looking for some place safe to hide. Not every SCP was active in their battle. Not every SCP was dangerous. This bulldog girl was proof of it and was, if anything, fighting on the side of the humans just because she wanted things to go back to their quiet, normal, peaceful ways.

"JUNE!" Cora and Shilo both panicked but June had already slipped out of their sight. Cora and Shilo both exchanged one look before charging in after her, picking up weapons off of the fallen soldiers around them.

Shilo was surprised by herself. Despite not being as trained in combat as June was, she managed to hold her own pretty well. In fact, she got so lost in the thrill and the blood that it wasn't until she heard an unholy scream coming from her left that she got distracted. What caught her ear particularly about this scream was how it sounded like that of a banshee, high-pitched and echoing, like listening to a recording with distorted sound. Wondering what new horror it was, she turned to look.

"June!" the girl almost dropped her weapon when she realized what she was looking at. The young woman had been struck down by Changeling who was currently mimicking a combined form of Howler and that kid with the sword. The sword had gone straight through June, entering her torso and exiting her spine.

The one who had screamed was not June, though. It was Cora. Her eyes and mouth were impossibly wide as she watched June slide off the end of the sword and onto the wet floor of the Foundation. After that, Shilo was witness to one of the most amazing (for better or worse) things that she had ever seen. Single-handedly, Cora killed Changeling. And not only that, but it almost looked like she had drained the life straight out of the creature. She had lunged onto him and, somehow, managed to sap the life force right out of him until he dropped dead, turning back into his shadow-form one last time before becoming like an ink-stain on the Foundation's floors. Shilo wasn't even going to ask how anymore. But then again, Cora didn't give her the chance to because even after she had downed Changeling, it was clear she was still lost in a mental breakdown.

"Cora? Cora?! Come back to me!" Shilo pleaded with the girl as she continued to ravish Changeling's "corpse", splashing his inky body violently. The moment Shilo touched Cora's arm, though, she suddenly found herself pinned to the ground with Cora above her, still lost in a fury. Shilo began to scream, trying to get Cora to snap out of it, but Cora was so far gone that all she could do was attack. She punched and scratched and clawed and bit and Shilo was totally at her mercy. Right before the killing blow, though, something yanked Cora clean up into the air and off of Shilo. And who was Shilo's sudden, mysterious savior?

"SCP-000!" and so it was.

The giant black man with the one glowing blue eye plucked Cora up by the scruff and then slammed her into a nearby wall. He repeated this motion over and over again until one particularly hard blow caused something to crack in Cora's head and this roused Shilo from her stupor.

"Wait, no! Stop!" the girl pleaded, hopping up and trying to rescue her friend from SCP-000. Shilo swallowed nervously as SCP-000 slowly turned his head, blue eye fixed on her.

Despite her terror, Shilo stood her ground and continued to plead with SCP-000.

"Let her go!" she insisted. SCP-000's only reply was to swat her away. It wasn't a particularly aggressive blow, but it still knocked Shilo back a few feet. "NO!" she hollered as she saw SCP-000 ready for a killing blow. She grabbed another weapon off the ground and threw it. It struck SCP-000 right in the head and Shilo quickly darted forward, catching Cora's motionless body as he dropped it, then, with Cora in her arms, Shilo ran.

One mad dash later, the girl found herself back in the hospital. She knew for a fact that SCP-000 was running after her. As she surveyed the hospital room, which was miraculously empty, she got an idea. Quickly, she placed Cora on one of the hospital beds and then hid behind another. Even though the hospital was empty, a lot of it was overturned. Clearly, a fight had occurred here. Shilo had since lost track of time and how long this battle had become. So the girl, as she crouched under a hospital bed, watched and waited. Just as planned, SCP-000 came right in. He paused when he only saw Cora's limp form on a bed. He approached it slowly and lifted up the blanket Shilo had settled over her body…

BANG! Shilo struck him again in the head, but this time with a metal bar that had come from one of the broken hospital beds. Caught off guard, the SCP slumped to the ground and Shilo raised the metal bar to strike again. Before she brought it down, though, the SCP began to morph before her very eyes and suddenly she was looking into the face of Nathan Wallace.

Nathan whipped around with a scowl until he realized who it was that had dared attack him like that.

"Shilo! Precious!" he stuttered fearfully as she stared back at him, eyes and mouth wide. "This isn't what it looks like!" but Shilo couldn't even process what she was seeing, let alone formulate up a reply. Her whole world had frozen in time and so had her mental capabilities. She could see, but she could not understand. She could only stare.

But then time unfroze, and suddenly, Shilo was all too aware of what was going on. Nathan began to cough and convulse. Perhaps Shilo had hit him too hard? Though to be honest, right now, she didn't care at all. Slowly, the stresses of the battle finally sank in and as they relentlessly overwhelmed her, one emotion triumphed over the others. Anger. She reared back, eyes flashing with hatred as she began to snarl at her father. Over his coughing and groaning, she snarled at him, demanding answers.

"Didn't you say that you were different?" she spat, raising the iron bar from the hospital bed again.

"I am!" he raise his arms in surrender, still on his knees in front of her.

"You're an SCP, aren't you?!" she pressed again, taking an aggressive step forward as he tried to crawl away.

"I am," he whimpered, looking shamefully at his feet.

"You're a monster, A KILLER!" Shilo screamed. "You were the one that tried to kill June, Cora and I all those years ago! You're SCP-000!"

"I am," Nathan repeated, though Shilo had not asked for confirmation.

"Well why? And how!? And why the Hell did you lie to me?! What other sick, evil secrets have you kept?!" she was going hysterical now.

"Shi, honey, I promise I'll tell you everything, but only if you listen!" Nathan cried. Shilo looked furious at the idea of listening to anything he had to say but her curiosity got the best of her and she fell silent. Nathan, after another hearty cough, made good on his word and explained...

Ever since the universe itself had begun, any array of anomalies, simple and complex, malignant and benign, big and small, impossible to understand and typical, had been created as well. And all across the history of the universe, this vast array of anomalies had been hard at work in shaping history as mankind knew it. For worse or for better, for ill intention or good, these anomalies interacted deeply with the fabrics of space and time. And somewhere along this vast cosmic timeline, Earth had come into play, and following a few billion years of existence, the SCP Foundation was created. Although there had been many iterations of the Foundation all across Earth's history, the history of the Foundation as Shilo knew it only come around in relatively recent years.

Following the mass organ epidemic that began around the turn of the 21st century, with so many people dead, SCPs as a whole became increasingly common. Never had there been a time when there were less people alive, never had there been a time when there had been less control exerted upon these SCPs. For that, they reached something of a golden age, but that came to an abrupt halt thanks to the rise of Rotti Largo and his megacorporation: GeneCo. Along with creating a medical industry that cured this mass epidemic, Rotti created the SCP Foundation, to capture and control these space-and-time anomalies and to keep the human race as the supreme beings of their known world.

But as time passed, Rotti stopped using his Foundation for containment purposes alone. Instead, in time, it became one giant testing facility, a lab. It was no accident that Rotti would send his best and smartest people to run the Foundation. He was turning the entire place from a prison to an experimentation lab. Rotti and his men studied everything they could about the SCPs, paying particularly close attention to their genes.

Rotti was a brilliant man, and he had several degrees in the life sciences, and it was his unsurpassed skill in the fields of genetics that had allowed him to come up with a cure for the worldwide organ epidemic in the first place. It was no surprise that one of the first things he tried to study within the SCPs was any possible genetic code. He was able to read genes better than anyone else and he figured that if he could unlock the genes of an SCP, he could unlock all of their secrets and all of their powers, and if he could recreate those gene codes he could, essentially, recreate an SCP. He could harness unspeakable, immeasurable power, if only he could understand what made an SCP tick. So that was what he had been doing. For all of this time, with his Foundation, he'd been trying to figure out how he could make the power of the SCPs his own, and he was going through a genetic-based route.

So Rotti had become a master of the human genes, and was slowly becoming the master of the SCP genes. The next logical step, for him, was to combine the two. And that had been the Foundation's job ever since. It wasn't only a holding cell for the universe's deadliest and most mysterious entities, it was also the perfect place for him to experiment with crossbreeding and hybridization. It was his way of trying to create the perfect human, and implement the power of an SCP into a human body. He was trying to create meta-humans who were half SCP. Superpowered humans that he had total control over. The perfect being. The ultimate genetic perfection.

In time, these bioengineered soldiers, made of human and SCP genes combined, became Rotti's inner circle, and they soon became the lifeblood of the SCP Foundation itself. Now, there was not one single pure human left within the entire Foundation and it was entirely run by genetically modified humans. Every being within the Foundation, no matter what their job was, had at least a few SCP genes within them.

"So I'm an SCP?" Shilo asked, sounding so horrified and betrayed that it broke Nathan's heart. Nathan nodded sadly.

"No! No! It can't be!" Shilo was in vehement denial.

"But Shilo, realize what I have said," Nathan pleaded. "Everyone in here is an SCP. That means June, Cora, Graverobber, Mr. Tender, you, me…"

"Impossible!" Shilo tried hard to deny Nathan's words. "June was always so friendly and Cora was so gentle! How could they-?"

"That's because of the genetic modification," Nathan explained gently. "The genes they were mixed with from birth were handpicked by Rotti and, of course, the modifications dulled down the more aggressive genes he inserted within their genome."

"Then what are their real forms?" Shilo asked. "What SCP genes are in them?"

"If you really want to know, follow me," Nathan replied, finally standing up. He walked out of the hospital and Shilo had no choice but to follow, throwing a miserable look at Cora, who was still entirely unconscious.

By the time Shilo and Nathan returned to the main part of the Foundation, the battle was over. Somehow, help had arrived in time and Rotti's fearsome GeneCops were able to give an added boost to the weakening SCP Fighters. But now it was over. The last of the SCPs had been successfully returned to their chambers. The game of who could outlast the other had been won by the humans thanks to the reinforcements. Of course, it would be awhile before a recovery was made, but the battle was over for now and that was all any of the few survivors cared about. Nathan moved past them all, Shilo in tow, unable to look at the few survivors and how broken they looked, physically, mentally and emotionally.

At last, the pair reached a part of the heart of the Foundation that was off limits to all except the very top workers. Although this was another place that had been thoroughly destroyed in the battle, it was still probably the most upright part of the Foundation left.

"Here," Nathan said. He moved along the wall which Shilo realized to be rows and rows of filing cabinets. With the speed of someone well-acquainted with this room, Nathan pulled out a handful of files. Shilo knew what they were but that didn't make reading them any easier.

By the end of the reading, Shilo realized that June was something like a siren. The SCP genes in her were what made her so seductive, and not necessarily in a sexual way, but in the kind of way that always made it impossible to deny her anything. She was irresistible, and this was why. She was like an angler fish, drawing her prey in with a beautiful light.

As for Cora, she was a type of parasite, feeding off of the life-essence of a host. The host, however, was never randomly chosen. Instead, it was always someone Cora would develop a deep bond with. Cora wasn't just a physical parasite, after all. She was also an emotional one. That explained why Cora was so very possessive of June. Shilo also remembered every time Cora's blue eyes took upon a green tint. So the girl was literally a green-eyed monster. Cora's possessiveness of June wasn't just the result of a lovesick schoolgirl, but of a parasite that literally could not live without a host that was fully devoted to it.

In addition, Shilo learned that Graverobber was little more than a reanimated corpse, a ghost. And he had the power to possess bodies. The body he resided in now was the one Rotti had created for him. Shilo felt queasy at the idea that her boyfriend was little more than a shell with something inside. He wasn't human so much as he was a vessel. Was this why Nathan had been so against her relationship with him?

"But what about us?" Shilo asked, feeling empty inside as she set aside the last file.

"Here," Nathan replied, then he handed his daughter two more pages. The first was for Nathan himself. As Shilo had already figured out, he was a Jekyll-Hyde type SCP and Rotti considered him one of the best hybrids ever created because of that. Rotti had created something with the raw power of an SCP but the sentience of a human man. He had combined strength and brutality with humanity, a perfect servant! It was why Nathan led the Keter Floor of the Foundation. He had both the intelligence and strength to do so.

But as for Shilo? She could infect anyone around her with a deadly disease. It was kind of like she could radiate a toxic nerve agent that mimicked the effects of the organ failure. This was part of the reason Shilo had spent 17 years of isolation within her own home. She was too dangerous and uncontrolled to be safe around other beings. Rotti didn't want more people keeling over from the organ failure.

And those medicines she took? Well, they were a way for her SCP ability to turn inward. That was right. In order to keep other people safe from the fact that she was basically a human virus, she took pills that caused this ability to attack her own body. Shilo almost threw up then and there, but Nathan began to speak again and he pulled her out of the mental Hell she was currently in.

"Do you remember every time you'd ask me a question and I would start coughing or wheezing or I'd ask to leave because I had a medical issue I needed to attend to?" he asked her. Shilo understood at once what he was implying. Every time she got angry and wished someone else harm, her SCP ability of infection would manifest itself in small doses.

Shilo covered her mouth with her hand in disbelief, guilt and agony. This was also why Nathan had been left to care for Shilo. Of anyone else, he had the best immune system was the least likely to be killed by Shilo. Nathan wasn't Shilo's father by birth, but by Rotti's choice. Someone had to look after her and who better than an SCP with a heightened immunity? Nathan was pretty close to being the genetic perfection that Rotti wanted, so he was the one tasked with looking after the girl who was little more than a virus in human form. And for all these years, she had been this way, her medicines acting as the only thing that kept her from accidently infecting the entire planet.

"What do we do now?" Shilo asked, crying, voice quiet and broken. Nathan hated himself for scarring his daughter in this way, but he knew he couldn't hide the truth any longer, and it would be better for her to find out from him than anyone else. Lord knew Nathan didn't trust Rotti one bit, and he would've much rather have told Shilo the truth himself than allow someone like Rotti to do it. And Shilo would eventually have had to learn this truth. She was supposed to take over his job, after all. She was destined to become the next leader of the Foundation, so she would eventually have to learn what she truly was, and why she was the perfect candidate for the job. Nathan figured he was the best person to tell her. It would either be him or Rotti, and Rotti wouldn't be anywhere near as sensitive or gentle as Nathan had been upon this night.

"The battle is over. They will send people out to rebuild tomorrow. All the healthy workers will help rebuild while the rest will be living on one of GeneCo's many floors until they are healthy enough to go back," Nathan answered. Shilo knew what he was implying.

"What about June and Cora?" she asked. The battle was over, but the aftermath was just starting. Did either of them have a hope of survival?

"Let's go find out," Nathan replied, then with his hand on Shilo's shoulder, the pair exited that little room and back into the corpse-ridden halls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This was the big chapter I really wanted to get to. It's the nitty gritty, with the huge reveal that literally no worker of the Foundation has been complete human in a very long time. Rotti's been bioengineering workers from Day One and Shilo and all her friends are all examples of this genetic perfection. In short, Rotti's using meta-humans and reformed, modified SCPs to look after the ones that cannot be saved (all the ones contained in the facility). What a plot twist, eh? Next chapter will only be an epilogue.


	4. Reborn

A few months later, things were relatively back to normal. The Foundation had been rebuilt and, along with a surprisingly high number of others, Cora had made a full recovery. She was back in the Foundation and she was back in Shilo's life. Or at least, most of her was. June had been Cora's host of choice for years and with June no longer alive, something else had to be done to keep Cora from going on another rampage.

Once again, a magic medicine from GeneCo was the cure. Cora took pills that altered her mind into thinking June was away on a weeklong trip, every week. That way, even though June was never coming back, Cora wouldn't know it and would so be able to live without going on a parasitic rampage. She would be convinced that June was only going to be gone for a little while longer...

As for what she would live off of with June gone? Well, Rotti and several others were trying to channel human essences over to Cora and even though Shilo still had no clue what that meant, it seemed to be working. Cora always looked and acted like one in good health, so whatever it was that Rotti was sending over, it was enough to keep Cora sane and sustained.

But speaking of Rotti, in all the time that it took to fix things, he had never once actually come over to visit the Foundation in person. Sure, he'd given quite a few grandiose speeches to the Foundation, but they were all done through a broadcast of some sort, and never a face-to-face talk. This irked a lot of people, especially given that Rotti was the father of the Foundation, but Shilo reasoned that it was probably all for the best. She personally hated Rotti enough that she would prefer him to stay as far away from her as possible, even if the idea of him refusing to visit his own creation seemed rather callous and immoral in the eyes of everyone else. He was just an all-out scumbag with nearly no redeeming qualities and Shilo knew nothing he would attempt would ever work because he was too corrupt of a man to ever mean anything good to anyone in the Foundation. He was the creator, yes, but that meant nothing. He was never around to truly support them. But that was not such a bad thing...

"I can't wait for June to come home!" Cora sighed wistfully as she and Shilo stood in the new Foundation.

"Don't worry, we'll see her again soon," Shilo murmured gently, knowing every word she said was a lie.

"Of course, I know," Cora smiled and hugged Shilo gently. "I know she's just busy right now, but so are we. I better get a move on with my duties. Dine with me tonight once we both get off of work?" she asked.

"Heck yeah!" Shilo play-punched Cora and Cora grinned back, little-knowing that Shilo's smile was a mask.

Shilo knew Cora would never see June again and even months later, this thought still broke Shilo's heart. But the grief didn't just come from June's absence within her life. On the contrary, it came from what had happened to June after the battle. She actually had not died upon that night, but the operations required to save her life pretty much forced her to succumb to her SCP side. It was either death, or becoming an SCP, and Shilo made the call for the latter option, unpleasant as that sounded. But the operation was carried out and June's life was saved, though she wasn't exactly the same girl Shilo had sent into the operating room...

"She's ready," Nathan had said about a month after the battle. He was, of course, referring to the "reborn" June.

"Can I see her now?" Shilo asked, eyes glittering fearfully as he said this.

"Are you sure?" Nathan asked uncertainly. Shilo nodded. "She may not be what you were used to," he warned.

"I don't care," Shilo promise bravely. "I just need to see her. Please!"

"Ok then, let's go," Nathan murmured, then he led his foster daughter to the Euclid Floor.

"There she is," Nathan whispered once they arrived at one of the many doors lining that floor. Shilo pressed her nose to the window of her door. June was facing away from them. She wore a red, tattered dress. Her hair was a bit more colored than before and it had been cut short. She sat at a tiny table under one little light, drinking tea and eating crumpets. The walls were lined in striped paper.

"She goes by the name "Painted Doll" now," Nathan whispered. Shilo looked up at him sadly but he continued on. "She can also be kind of temperamental and violent, so be careful and talk soft. Also, she doesn't like being touched, so try and resist, no matter how hard it may feel. And, she might move in awkward spurts. This sporadic movement is normal, so don't be alarmed," he listed off.

"Ok. Anything else I need to know?" the girl asked her father as he finished the list.

"No. You may go in now if you wish," the man replied. Shilo nodded, so he opened the door.

"Hey Doll," Shilo said softly as she entered the little room. Doll turned slowly and Shilo fought back a cry of horror upon seeing June's face directly for the first time since before the Foundation battle. The entire right half of her face was cracked, chipped. Shilo could see where the name had come from. It was eerie to see that spider-web crack running across her face. Shilo instinctively knew it would never heal.

"How have you been?" the girl asked as she joined the Doll at her little table. Doll, having taken a vow of silence, did not reply. Instead, she only slid her guest a little cup of tea. Out of politeness, Shilo drank the tea.

Once the cup was empty, Shilo continued to try and talk with her old friend, but she still received no reply. Shilo felt tears burn her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Nathan had been right. This really wasn't June at all. Her true friend was dead. Whatever this replacement was, it wasn't what Shilo had hoped. It was a mere imposter, a shadow of what it used to be. Granted, Shilo hadn't expected June to come back in pristine condition, but this new form of June's was so different from what June used to be that Shilo wasn't even sure who she was looking at anymore.

Doll only continued to eye her with boredom, occasionally tossing her a cookie. She was entirely apathetic to Shilo's internal suffering. Shilo just felt so awkward there, rambling on about things Doll seemed to hold in disdain.

At last, though, Shilo called it quits. She bowed to Doll and she slowly, softly exited the room. Right before she closed the door to Doll's cell, however, she looked back at her old friend one last time. She felt her heart break a little more and she was sure it would resemble the right half of Doll's face before the day was out. Doll had already resumed drinking her tea and staring emptily at her striped wallpaper. Somehow, Shilo knew that Doll had already forgotten about her and no longer cared at all. This reborn June was wildly different from the one Shilo had lost.

"I'm sorry, Shilo," Nathan murmured, taking his distress daughter into his arms. Shilo ran into them willingly, tears running down her face. Life had most certainly not gone the way she'd planned. One of her best friends was doomed to live forever as an apathetic SCP while the other was doomed to live forever in a drug-induced delusion. And to top it off, Shilo had to bear the giant burden of knowing that ever living creature within the Foundation was technically an SCP, and she would not be allowed to tell anyone else ever.

But for all the pain Shilo was in, since she had no choice other than to keep on living, some of her grief did finally subside. Cora was still on her "meds", Doll was still as apathetic as ever (but she'd developed a friendship with Scorpion, oddly enough), and Nathan still the head of the Keter Floor. But Shilo, herself, had taken over as a teacher in the Foundation, much to everyone's surprise. There was still a rumor about Nathan potentially trying to get Shilo to fill his shoes once he got old enough to retire, but as that was still a long time away. Besides, even though Shilo still would've preferred to choose her own destiny instead of just standing in as a replacement for her father, she had begun to see the world in a new light and understand that certain roles had to be filled and it wasn't necessarily a freedom being stripped from her so much as it was a role she was being asked to fill. Just because she might take her father's place one day didn't mean she was only his shadow. She could stylize the job the way she wanted so that the story would still be her own. She was Shilo, not Nathan Jr. after all. She would write her own story, no matter what job she ultimately ended up keeping within the Foundation.

"I can't wait for June to come home!" Cora sighed wistfully again, just like always.

"Don't worry, we'll see her again soon," Shilo replied, like the well-rehearsed actress she had been forced to become.

"Of course, I know," Cora smiled obviously. "I better get a move on with my job. Dine with me tonight?"

"Heck yeah," Shilo said, trying to sound excited. Shilo and Cora were still friends, but Shilo hated these moments that brought back the memories of the past and made Cora sound like a broken record frozen in time. It saddened Shilo to think that there would always be a small part of Cora that was physically unable to progress...

"Cora! Where are you?!" one of the other SCP Foundation employees called out to the brunette.

"Ooh! Gotta go! I'll see you later, ok?" she asked, turning to Shilo one last time.

"Of course. See ya!" Shilo gave the girl a weak smile then she watched as Cora turned to go. She heaved one last sigh of her own before heading back to her own job as teacher. Today was a First Day, meaning she was going to be giving tours to the new kiddos. She didn't want to be late.

"Attention all SCP Personnel!" Shilo boomed. "As new recruits to this Foundation, you will now commence a tour of this facility. I will divide you amongst four groups and there will be no complaining," she said. Then, with that, Shilo called out the names from her list and set them all in certain groups. Mr. Tender, Mr. Storm and Graverobber, who had since become husband to Shilo, were each leading one of the groups. Shilo was going to take the remainders. When she realized who the remainders were, however, she suddenly regretted coming into work that day.

"You're Mrs. Wallace?" one of them asked as the others left the main hall.

"Ummm, uhhh, yeah!" Shilo gulped. "But I actually just remembered I had to do something, so I'll be right back!" she said, then before any of the three new students could speak, Shilo had run off.

"Dad?" Shilo burst in on her father in his office.

"Shilo? What's wrong?" he asked, sounding genuinely alarmed.

"Can you take some of the new recruits on the tour?" Shilo asked. For a moment, Nathan could only stare.

"What? Why?" he asked once his daughter's odd and oddly desperate request sank in.

"You'll see," Shilo replied, then she pulled the aging man back to the main hall. The pair leaned in the doorway, spying upon the three students.

"Do you see that?" Shilo asked Nathan. "They remind me of June, Cora, and myself!" she pulled Nathan in closer and he gasped. Shilo was right. The three new students, all young girls, looked just like June, Cora and Shilo reborn. Nathan understood at once why Shilo was afraid to take them, but now Nathan was too.

"I don't want to take them either!" he protested.

"Rock Paper Scissors?" Shilo pleaded and Nathan agreed.

"What was that?" one of the new recruits asked, surprised at sending Shilo scurrying off so quickly.

"Look at that, Emilie, you've already scared them away!" the other recruit joked.

"Oh, hush Lyndon," Emilie, the first recruit, retorted and Lyndon stuck her tongue out.

"Don't worry, Emilie. I'm on your side!" the last responded.

"Thank you Alexa. See, she knows what's up," Emilie threw an arm around Alexa's shoulder and grinned. Lyndon playfully rolled her eyes.

"I hope this tour starts soon," Alexa murmured while Emilie and Lyndon continued to banter silently.

"I know right?" Lyndon asked, finally ceasing making faces at Emilie to address Alexa. "I mean, this is kind of exciting, even if it is dangerous."

"Danger's my middle name!" Emilie puffed out her chest boldly. "Besides, we'll have Shilo with us. What could possibly go wrong?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: And here's the little epilogue that wraps it all up. The reveal is out, the Foundation is fixed, Shilo is on a shaky path to a future, and three new recruits roll into the Foundation and they just might be crazy enough to change the story one last time... 
> 
> (And yes, Painted Doll is June's SCP-self. Ain't I original? LOL)


End file.
